Day 3 - Berlin & Sachsenhausen, Germany / Amsterdam, Netherlands

Hey family and friends,

we woke up this morning to start our second day full day of Euro Tour. It started with us all having to pack up our stuff and check out of our first hotel. We then headed to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp about an hour out of Berlin, where we toured the now memorial sight. We then got on a bus to Amsterdam which took 9 hours, on the way we stopped for lunch. Besides the fact the bus ride was long we still managed to make it fun and enjoyable by watching many movies, playing games, sleeping and singing along to the various songs.

Going to a concentration camp, at least for us, made us think about many aspects of life. You feel humbled by the experience, and it reminds you not to take your freedom for granted. The fact that the concentration camp was liberated by the Soviets, who then later used the concentration camp with their prisoners, was astounding. The fact that those who liberated a camp, those who had seen its affects and saved people in it, later sent their own countrymen into the same conditions was amazing to think about. Not only that, but Sachsenhausen was still being used 50 years ago.  That’s pretty recent.

Going to this place also makes you think of responsibility, both that which you have as an individual and as a society . One of the things that Germany has done as of late is create memorials for all of the victims of the Holocaust. We saw a lot of them yesterday in Berlin, and Germany actually has a lot of accountability for their past.

Tomorrow we plan to tour Amsterdam on two wheels.

Alice Becker-Scott & Alex O’Hara
   (Australia)         (USA)